Twitter is as complex as any society. Some people take leading roles trying to share their ideas, knowledge or plain stupidity, others choose to listen in quietly and learn, laugh and think at whatever the speakers say. Twitter is no exception. When you look at users on Twitter, you will find a lot of different types of users:
- Listener
- Inactive
- Speaker
- Authority
- Evangelist
- Socializer
- Screamer
- Spammer
Below we will go through each type of user and try to find the characteristics that defines them, hopefully making it easier for you to choose who to follow and who not to follow. In short we will try to give you some easy-to-use prejudice in order to separate the good people from the bad people (depending on what type you are). It will also be obviously clear to yourself who of these roles you take on when using Twitter.
The Inactive User
The inactive Twitter-account is a typical user you will see in all big social networks such as LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook etc. They tend to be one of these types of people:
- Early Adopters who did not understand the greatness of the tool when they first tried it
- Invited by an Early Adopter, Socializer, Screamer or Spammer and have yet to understand what kind of service they signed up to
- Multiple Accounts can also be the reason, maybe the person first signed up with his business e-mail address, and then at home, with his private address, and started tweeting on his “private” account.
Typical for the inactive user is few, if any, followers and few, if any, persons they follow. They will probably follow the person who invited them, if they understood how to set up their accounts. Inactive users can become active users, it is difficult to see what kind of type they will become if they get active. If you find people you know who are inactive, start following them and you will eventually be the one who converts an inactive user to an active user and a presumtive follower.
The Listener
The listener is a typical blog reader who likes to find authorities in different areas and listen to them, and try to make sense of the information they get. Listeners could grow into become Speakers, Socializers or Inactive depending on how their career and feeling for Twitter as a tool grows. I believe that the typical Listener is
The Speaker
Speakers see Twitter as a tool to have their voice heard, I would dare to say that the majority of bloggers using Twitter are speakers. Speaking, or making your voice heard on Twitter is a good complement to your blog. Often tweets are too short for a blog post and using Twitter may give you a lot of input on what to write next on your blog. The typical speaker are only interested in getting heard, but he/she would probably be better off adding some Listener and Socializer into their Twitter-behaviour if they would like to grow their number of followers.
The Authority
Authorities exists in all niches. An authority can have authoritative knowledge or just being a supreme human being such as Paris Hilton or other untouchables. Authorities are identified by the ridiculous amount of followers. Often the followers by far suceeds the number they follow. One interesting thing about this category is Barack Obama who, during his campaign, followed all who followed him (of course automatic, but cool to have Barack Obama as follower on Twitter). Below I have listed some authoroties on Twitter in different niches:
The Evangelist
Evangelists have a purpose, they serve a higher belief, they want you to learn. Evangelists can say stupid things ordinary people say, the difference is that when someone who is an evangelist says it, people take it as the truth, and when you say it one minute before the evangelist, no one listens, and if they do, they think you and your ideas suck (When you say: “What did I just say”, no one remembers that you said something). In short evangelists can get away with murder. In real life there are some Evangelists spreading the truth and knowledge in different areas:
- Dalai Lama
- Dr Phil
- Al Gore
- Donald Trump
The Socializer
The Socializer looks at Twitter and sees a community. He or she wants to connect to as many people as possible, discussing and rant about everything. For the Socializer tweeting or listening is not the key thing, it is the feeling of connecting, building networks, making people in their network feel better and so on. The Socializer serves a great role in networks such as Twitter as he or she acts as a catalyser for people connected to him/her finding new people to follow on Twitter. The problem with a Socializer is that the socializer may be close to a Spammer. There is a thin line between Socilizer Supreme and Spammer, if you find yourself in the Socilizer category, be aware that people may fancy you too much after a while. Compare the Socializer with the connected people you have on Facebook who constantly invites you to applications and contests. The Socializer may eventually send you emails with santa.exe.
The Screamer
Screamers are Authorities that think they are Evangelists and behave as a mix of Spammer and Speaker. They are not interested in you. They already know everything, and the only thing they are interested in is to boost their followers-number in order to get more people to follow their blog in order to further boost their ego. The typical Screamer are followed by thousands and follows no one. They scream their perfection to the followers only hoping to add numbers to their followers list and rss readers list. These guys/girls need to wake up before it is too late and all their subscribers have found what egocentric piece of crap he/she really is. The only one who could get away with this behaviour is of course Chuck Norris http://twitter.com/pain.
The Spammer
The Spammer spams the Twitter Network with Spam. First you are glad that FreePokerKing666 is following you, and when you look at his profile, just before you hit follow, you see that he tends to be very open minded on who to follow on Twitter, he follows 45000 people and are followed by 1900. He will probably not indulge in interesting conversations with you on your tweets. He will however be happy to have 1900 people to address with spam, and hopefully not all will stop following him, and after a while maybe even some crazy person clicks his links. Spammers can also come in more subtle disguise, from far looking like a Socializer or Athuority. Beware, there are a lot of spammers out there and they will probably grow in numbers and find better disguising methods.
Summary
In this article we have talked you through a couple of different types of users you will run into when using Twitter. Depending on what type you are yourself, you are probably more likely to connect to some user types and stay away from others. Hopefully this post has made you gain some insight to how different people use Twitter and for different purposes.
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